


Family is Blood

by focaccia



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 23:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/focaccia/pseuds/focaccia
Summary: Rei's feelings about her brother.





	Family is Blood

The first time they reunited, she told him she was sent away and then sold to the Yakuza. She looks into his eyes and he is distraught, he thought Jaegar had kept his word. He is naive.  
She wonders if she should mention all the violence that was done to her body.

  
He’s a Praetorian though, trained to go through torturous mind constructs. She knows he will try hard to understand, try to relate her pain to the phantom and physical pains he has went through during missions. And although she herself went through it, she does not have the heart to tell him that she is worlds away from the innocent little sister he left behind.

Her fingers curl around the dragon necklace. Mom always complained. She will not.  
–

The ship is falling and he has a gun at her throat.  
She looks into his eyes and wonder if, just if, a small part of him back then, at the beginning, when he was a child and in the interrogation room and Jaegar offered him a place to fight, a seat at the table - she wonders if a small part of him knew that there was a chance Jaegar wouldn’t keep his word. He had to. He was a smart kid, he had to have known that. He had to have known that and still he chose to leave her. Because he always thought there was a higher calling; a higher purpose for him.

He’s her big brother. His only job is to protect her.  
He’s been leaving her for these things since then - first the Protectorate, then Quell and her bloody suicide mission.  
But who was he following now? Ortega? Another Meth?

Quell offered him a world doomed to die. She is offering him a thousand tomorrows. Why won’t he pick her?  
–  
He says he loves her but she’s always been one to pick up the pieces. That day they met after fifteen years, who did the saving then? When he was just a foot soldier, thinking this was any other mission, and the look on his face when he recognized her.  
He had never seen her and saw all of her since then. When he looked at her with every inch of his being and his beating heart. She would pay lifetimes to see that look again.  
–  
He’s waiting for her to give in and there’s a flash of something in his eyes. She wonders what he thinks of her now.  
A clench of his jaw. She can feel his breath on her skin. She can feel the tremors of his hand vibrating up the gun and into her neck.  
And that’s when she realizes that there’s no one he’s following. He will be alone in this world without her. He is naive.


End file.
